CHAPTER EIGHT
Nonna Luna’s Apprentice

Due to his potential to spark an epidemic, Ernest was immediately quarantined to Nonna Luna’s kitchen where he spent the ensuing weeks. Oslo’s instructions were explicit: Ernest was not permitted to leave the kitchen, which doubled as the infirmary, until more information regarding his condition came to hand. He was put to use assisting Nonna Luna in simple culinary tasks such as shelling peas and mashing herbs to a paste using a mortar and pestle. Ernest was grateful to be indoors and away from the gruelling pace of Oslo’s training. It was cool and fragrant in the kitchen, and there were no expectations of him that might prove hazardous to his health.

Amidst the gloominess that was Battalion Minor, Nonna Luna’s kitchen was a haven of interesting smells and sights. Copper pots and pans bubbled on the cast-iron stove and there were bunches of aromatic herbs growing in pots on the windowsill. Something looking like salt-encrusted strips of tree bark hung from hooks, which Nonna identified for Ernest as dried cod.

Woven baskets arranged on a rustic dresser bulged with heads of garlic and clusters of onions. The oven, which radiated constant heat, was large enough to stand up in, and there was a giant slab of marble on a bench for the express purpose of kneading dough. Legs of cured meat, protected from flies by netting, and wheels of cheese as large as footstools were stored in the cool room.

Ernest noticed something else that was kept in the cool room. Something that, unlike the meats, seemed to be alive. Hanging from a hook on the cool-room door was a tapestry knapsack. Ernest barely gave it a second glance when he went in to collect a string of chubby pork sausages, until he realised that it was squirming and wriggling, as if whatever lived inside was eager to get out. When Ernest looked more closely he saw that the knapsack was drawn together not by cords but by a pair of black asps coiled around each other. They appeared to be sleeping, but, being sensitive to body heat, awoke with a hiss when he approached. Ernest leapt back in alarm.

Nonna Luna, who had followed him in, patted his arm. ‘Don’t worry. No toucha da sack and nutting happen,’ she said.

‘They must be guarding something very valuable,’ Ernest probed, curious now the danger had passed.

‘Some tings are betta for little ones not to know,’ Nonna Luna answered mysteriously.

The kitchen window looked onto a well-tended vegetable garden, where there were glossy oblong tomatoes growing on stakes, bright horn-shaped chillies in terracotta pots, and plants weighed down by beans in speckled red casings. Clusters of purple grapes hung from a vine twisting its way around a pergola. Arranged on trays were rows of tomatoes drying in the sun.

As for Nonna Luna herself, she was as creased as a walnut. When she grinned you could see she was almost toothless, but that didn’t stop her from grinning as she was a lively soul and easily entertained. Her hands were gnarled like the branches of an old tree, but her eyes still twinkled with girlish mischief. Dark hairs sprouted from a mole on her chin the size of a coffee bean. She wore only black, apart from thick coloured socks, a silk kerchief she wound around her head to keep her hair out of the way, and a red and white novelty apron. The apron read Domestic Goddess and depicted Venus wielding a wooden spoon. It was a treasured gift from Lampo during his more attentive days, and Nonna Luna never took it off, not even to wash it.

Nonna Luna’s attachment to Ernest was instant, heartfelt and unabashed. The undernourished, pale-skinned boy who turned up at her kitchen door forlornly scratching his eczema bore an uncanny resemblance to her own grandson when he was a boy. If she fattened him up a little, he would surely be the spitting image of Federico. Unlike Lampo, Ernest showed himself to be a quick learner, a courteous listener and engaging company. His fastidiousness in particular was a ceaseless source of entertainment for the old woman. She would double over with laughter watching him inspecting cutlery before using it or eating only the iceberg leaves in a mixed salad.

‘We must toughen you up,’ she would comment jokingly.

As Nonna Luna’s apprentice, Ernest picked up much more than culinary tips. As well as being a renowned fortune-teller and a crafty cook, Nonna Luna was first and foremost a storyteller. The hoard of tales she regaled Ernest with had been passed down through generations and were steeped in magic and folklore. Nonna was also highly superstitious and the victims of her stories were invariably foolhardy characters who threw caution to the wind and failed to heed the advice of wiser and older relatives. Almost everything in her tales was either a symbol, an omen or a forewarning of some kind.

It was from Nonna Luna that Ernest learned that if you crossed paths with a priest or a nun wearing black, you must immediately touch something made of iron to reverse the bad luck. Tugging the sleeve of a dwarf, on the other hand, could bring years of prosperity. If someone complimented the baby in your perambulator, you must spit three times on the child to protect it from ill intentions, subconscious or otherwise. Nonna Luna taught Ernest that a ladybird landing on the tip of your finger was a sure sign you would be lucky in love, whilst the sighting of a white cat meant an encounter with death. The spilling of red wine foretold the imminence of good fortune, whilst the spilling of oil would result in hardship only an entire rosary of Hail Marys could revoke.

Some of Nonna Luna’s recommendations extended to health issues. For example, crossing your legs for too long would cut off your blood supply and promote the appearance of varicose veins. Bathing in the sea was unbeaten as a treatment for acne—a remedy Ernest seriously doubted when one considered what ended up in the oceans. Dousing a cut finger in your own urine was the best antiseptic, and the consumption of too much marzipan could result in deformed ear lobes. Red peppers consumed after three o’clock in the afternoon would invariably bring on a night of indigestion. Sleeping on one’s back encouraged nightmares of the worst kind and a thimble of brandy in the morning ensured healthy circulation. Eating from the same plate as a stranger was very ‘dangerose’ because it could inflame the wildest of passions.

The rational Ernest found these anecdotes both mystifying and irresistible. The downside was that Nonna Luna was not content with relating her beliefs; she insisted upon practical demonstrations in order to prove her theories.

One afternoon Ernest made the rash mistake of complaining to Nonna of a mild headache. How was poor Ernest to know that complaining of a headache to an Italian grandmother was tantamount to saying he had come home to find his name scrawled in blood on the walls and the severed head of his favourite goose in the bed? It meant only one thing—someone was out to get him.

Perhaps you have learned in school about the ancient cure for a headache, which involved a surgeon drilling a hole in the sufferer’s head to allow evil spirits to escape. Nonna Luna had similar views on the cause of headaches, but fortunately for Ernest, a drill did not feature in her remedy.

‘Malocchio!’ chanted the old woman, her eyes glazing over. Malocchio, for those of you who have not come across the term, literally translates to ‘evil eye’ and belief in it dates back to medieval times.

Nonna Luna seized Ernest and propelled him into the nearest chair. ‘Lettuce see whether you have been cursed,’ she said. ‘Mebbe someone is thinking bad thoughts on you.’

She proceeded to drizzle into a bowl of water a few drops of the best cold-pressed olive oil, which she poured from a ceramic decanter.

‘If da oil dissolve, you hava the Malocchio sure as I hava corns.’

‘That’s impossible,’ Ernest objected.

‘No, I do hava corns. You want to see?’

‘No, I mean that oil and water are immiscible substances. That means they are incapable of being mixed and oil therefore cannot possibly dissolve in water without defying the laws of science.’

‘What doesa science know?’ Nonna Luna scoffed. ‘Scientists still hava not found a cure for the common cold. Quiet now and watch!’

Before Ernest could object, her coarse thumb began to trace the sign of the cross on his forehead while she mumbled some words in her broken English which he thought went like this:

Evil Eye, Evil Eye,

Three pairs of eyes have watched you

Three Judas’s have betrayed you

Evil Eye, Evil Eye,

Don’t batter at my door

Find yourself another target

Evil Eye, Evil Eye

Now begone forever!

When the oil dissolved upon contact with the water, Nonna Luna let out a high-pitched wail.

‘Cursed,’ she muttered. ‘My Ernesto has been touched by the Malocchio!’

Taking up the bowl, Nonna Luna hurried outside, threw the water onto the earth and stomped fervently on it with both feet. When Ernest looked puzzled, she explained, ‘To stampa da evil into da ground. Now we must repeat.’ She hobbled back inside and grasped Ernest by the arm. He tried to squirm away but his strength was no match for Nonna Luna who had built up biceps of steel from years of kneading dough. The ritual was repeated until the oil floated in globules on the water’s surface.

‘Now Ernesto is free!’ she declared in triumph.

Not wanting any repeats of this performance, Ernest devised a way for Milli to accompany him on kitchen duty the next day. This was not as difficult as they had imagined. Milli only needed to feign dizziness, the first symptom of Boilexplodoitis, for Oslo to exempt her from the day’s training.

When the children arrived at Nonna Luna’s kitchen, the first thing she did was to pin a red ribbon to one of Ernest’s undergarments.

‘Justa for extra protection,’ she said, and winked.

She then proceeded to attach more red accessories to various parts of Ernest. His shoelaces were now red, there was a red clip in his hair and Nonna Luna even had the nerve to expect him to wear a red chilli threaded onto a leather cord around his neck. She only allowed him to remove it when his eyes watered so profusely that he couldn’t see what he was doing and added a handful of coffee beans instead of borlotti beans to a pot of soup.

At one point, an owl, earthy brown in colour, flew in through the open window and settled on the back of a kitchen chair. Ernest made to chase it out but Nonna Luna stretched out an arm and made a gentle clucking sound with her tongue. The owl spread its wings, which were flecked with delicate patterns underneath, and flew towards her. The flurry of wings was enough to cause Ernest to duck under the kitchen table. The owl settled comfortably on Nonna Luna’s shoulder. Up close, the children could see that the creature’s eyes were without pupils or irises. They were simply two opaque marbles that rolled back into its head whenever the animal was annoyed.

‘Dis is Olive,’ Nonna Luna said, stroking the bird affectionately.

‘Is she blind?’ Milli asked.

‘Olive issa blessed with inner vision. She is very good companion.’

‘I thought fortune-tellers had cats as companions,’ Milli said.

‘Olive is more cleva dan any lazy cat.’ As if to demonstrate this, Nonna Luna issued an instruction. ‘Olive, bringa me some rosemary for tonight’s offal pie.’

Olive immediately swooped out of the open window and returned carrying a sprig of the requested herb in her beak.

The following days spent in Nonna Luna’s kitchen were a welcome reprieve for the children, especially as Nonna produced all sorts of delicacies for them to sample. Having been nourished by nothing but meat, they relished any departure from protein and Nonna Luna seemed to draw immense satisfaction from feeding them a wide variety of dishes. To the children’s surprise, she became quite agitated (going so far as to lament and pull at her hair) if they ever declined an item from her never-ending stream of treats.

‘Thank you, but we’re ready to burst!’ Milli explained, but Nonna Luna simply began hitting herself over the head with a bread stick and they did not like to argue any further.

In one day alone with Nonna Luna they consumed creamy gnocchi with a six-cheese sauce that simply melted in their mouths, home-made canolli (which are crunchy tubes of pastry filled with custard and dusted with icing sugar) and a dish containing olives, cold meats and crusty bread which Ernest thought was named after someone called Auntie Pastie until Nonna Luna told him otherwise.

‘How lucky Federico is to have a grandmother like you,’ Milli commented, her mouth full of a mascarpone-stuffed fig.

A shadow came over Nonna Luna’s face at the mention of her wayward grandson and she was forced to blink back tears. Not wanting to aggravate the situation further (Lampo was clearly a sensitive topic), the children waited patiently for her to recover.

‘My Federico not always this way,’ Nonna Luna began, blowing her nose like a trumpet. ‘He was once a good boy, top of his class. He study music and hope to be a concert pianist.’ She lowered her voice and looked around furtively in case she might be overheard. ‘Then Federico began to mixa with the wrong crowd. He was so young [a mere boy of thirty-three]. He starta to eat hamburgers, sleep tilla lunchtime and disown his Nonna. What canna I do? It happen in da best of families.’

‘That’s a very sad story,’ Ernest agreed kindly, but Nonna Luna hardly seemed to hear him, so preoccupied was she with recalling past disappointments.

‘Of course, I hava only myself to blame,’ she continued, wringing her hands and swaying in distress. ‘I shoulda pay more attention to him when he try to read me his poems. But they so long and with such difficult words!’

‘Of course it isn’t your fault!’ Milli countered, but Nonna Luna was beyond consolation.

‘I offer him everything: endless supply of home-made pasta, a roof over his head, a respectable wife! But he no lissen to me and now looka how he turn out.’

‘How?’ Milli asked.

‘The toya boya of that witch! He thinka he so important now working for a Contessa. Contessa, my warts! I beta no one seen any papers to prove her ancestry.’

‘Do you know what they’re up to?’ Milli said.

‘I don’t even know what he has for brekafest! Federico has no time for his old Nonna now.’

The outburst seemed to have a cathartic effect on Nonna Luna. She took a deep breath before vigourously chopping some parsley she hoped would make the hideous flavour of offal pie more palatable. The children, however, were disappointed with the meagre information gleaned from this exchange. They had hoped Nonna Luna would prove a goldmine of information.

‘There must be something more you can tell us about why we’re here,’ Milli pleaded.

But Nonna Luna had done enough confiding for one day. She turned her attention to the dinner she was about to serve up and would not be drawn into further discussion. Food preparation simply took all of her concentration.

Despite their impatience, Milli and Ernest were forced to resign themselves to learning nothing further from Nonna Luna that night.